Ex-Governor James Ibori of Delta State is very angry presently and his Media Aide, Mr. Tony Eluemunor has issued a statement: “What makes it galling is the matter under contention-the Department of State Security (DSS’s) report that stopped the Senate from confirming Mr. Ibrahim Magu as the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and did not warrant the dragging in of Ibori’s name at all.”
“Yet, the online publication, PREMIUM TIMES went wild, making baseless accusations against Ibori, though it had said it was checking the facts in DSS’ allegations. Specifically, on the allegation that during the tenure of Farida Waziri as EFCC chairperson, sensitive documents were found in Magu’s home, the online newspaper wrote that: The facts do not support that claim.”
“What Ibori finds irresponsible is the allegation that was based on pressure from political gladiators of the period (among which were former Governors James Ibori and Bukola Saraki), then President Musa Yar’Adua unceremoniously removed Nuhu Ribadu as chairman of the EFCC.”
“Present Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, has exposed this claim as a terrible lie in his book ‘The Accidental Public Servant’, where he stated the source of the trouble he and Ribadu had with the late President Umar Yar’Adua. On page 358, in a section entitled: ‘Umaru Asks Nuhu for Support: the Beginning of Our Trouble’, he wrote that Ribadu was so maddened that former President Olusegun Obasanjo had favoured Yar’Adua above Nasir-el-Rufai to succeed him as president in 2007 that he told it to Yar’Adua to his face.”
“It is clear that from El-Rufai that there was no way a clear-headed Yar-Adua would have appointed a power-drunken Ribadu, who had unjustly arrested some Katsina State’s council chairmen just to demonise Yar’Adua to remain as EFCC chairman-to continue to arrest people unjustly, play politics with his office and hypocritically claim to be fighting corruption when he was neck deep in the worst corruption, maligning others just because of politics.”